The leader who leads from the front
As General Secretary of the CPC, Xi Jinping has spent the last year preparing the Party for the challenges to come,
Improving people’s livelihoods took center stage during President Xi Jinping’s major domestic inspection tours last year, highlighting his “people-centered” governance philosophy.
“The well-being of our people is the Party and the government’s greatest political achievement. Our cadres should put the people’s living conditions at the heart of their activities and help them to live better lives,” he said in his New Year’s speech.
Xi said he was aware of people’s major concerns, such as education, employment, incomes, social security, medical care, security in old age, housing and the environment.
In his 2017 New Year address, he said, “The people in trouble are the ones I care about the most.”
His words were greeted with widespread public approval.
Actions speak louder than words. On many occasions in the past year, Xi visited poor rural families, urged officials to serve the people, and warned against undesirable work styles, including bureaucracy and formalism, which may harm people’s interests.
Poverty alleviation
While inspecting Zhangjiakou in the northern province of Hebei, Xi called for greater efforts to help the poor develop industries that could be expanded in a sustainable manner, establish long-lasting mechanisms for poverty alleviation and create ways of helping people to achieve prosperity.
He stressed the importance of making sure every impoverished family has a strategy to raise their income and every poor person has a means of lifting themselves out of poverty.
“Poverty alleviation is becoming increasingly difficult as it progresses toward the end,” Xi said.
During visits to rural settlements he asked residents a number of questions: How did they obtain drinking water? When did they buy their television? How many TV programs could they receive? What activities had been arranged for Spring Festival?
In June, during an inspection tour of Lyuliang, Shanxi province, Xi went into a hut in Zhaojiawa, a hillside village of mud houses, and sat on the
kang, a type of traditional brick bed heated by fire that was once widely used in the countryside but is rarely seen nowadays.
“Let’s chat,” Xi said to Liu Fuyou and his wife, inviting them to sit beside him.
“Are you still able to do farmwork? Is the drought serious this year? Do your children work away from the village? Do they help you out?” the president asked the 70-something couple.
Liu said: “Our family made less than 7,000 yuan ($1,073) last year. We earned about 500 yuan by growing grain. The rest came from the government.” His five children left the village when they married, but his 92-year-old mother lives with him and his wife.
Xi told them: “The Party has made a solemn promise that poverty-stricken people and areas will be able to enter a ‘moderately prosperous society’ along with the rest of the nation.”
He added that efforts will be made to ensure the pledge is honored, no matter how arduous the process may be.
Poverty alleviation is high on the list of priorities in the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), and the government has vowed to lift everybody out of poverty by 2020. Last year, more than 10 million rural residents saw their living standards improve.
At the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Xi was a delegate for southwest China’s Guizhou province, one of the country’s poorest regions with per capita GDP of around 33,000 yuan, close to 20,000 yuan below the national average in 2016.
While joining the panel discussion with delegates from Guizhou, Xi discussed such things as pork delicacies, liquor production and tourism, all of which are regarded as effective means of bringing extra income for the population.
Well-being
In his report to the 19th CPC National Congress in October, Xi highlighted a change in society’s “principal contradiction” — that between unbalanced and inadequate development and people’s ever-growing need for a better life.
Xi urged all Party members to fully implement the vision of “making development people-centered” to further ensure and improve the people’s well-being, while ensuring access to childcare, education, employment, medical services, senior care, housing and social assistance.
“The original aspiration and mission of Chinese Communists is to seek happiness for the Chinese people and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” Xi told the more than 2,300 delegates.
While delivering a speech at a gathering to mark the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China, Xi expressed concerns about the well-being of people in the city, saying that “housing and other issues that affect the daily lives of the people have become more serious”.
“To address these challenges, meet the expectations of the people of Hong Kong for a better life and advance Hong Kong’s development in all sectors, we must stay on the correct and steady course, gain full understanding of the ‘one country, two systems’ policy and faithfully implement it,” Xi said.
During an inspection tour of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region in April, Xi spoke with 14 representatives from grassroots organizations to gather their opinions ahead of the 19th CPC National Congress.
The president told them he attaches great importance to the advice and opinions of people from grassroots organizations, and he urged officials to gather public opinions to aid the decision-making process at the congress.
While inspecting Mazhuang, a village in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, in December, Xi bought a hand-made bag, paying an elderly villager named Wang Xiuying 30 yuan as a way of supporting her efforts to build a better life.
He stated that local officials must improve the transparency of village affairs and information.
Later, Wang told reporters she had been deeply moved and encouraged by the president’s support. “Although I am already 80 years old, I will make greater efforts to preserve traditional culture and work with other villagers to make money,” she said.
Original aspirations
Soon after the congress, Xi led the newly elected top leadership on visits to historic revolutionary sites in Shanghai and Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, to demonstrate the new leadership’s belief in staying true to the Party’s original aspirations and serving the people.
At the memorial hall of the First CPC National Congress in Shanghai, Xi led the other six leaders in reciting the admission oath in front of the Party flag, reminding all Party members to remain true to the CPC’s original ideals.
“Only by staying true to our original aspirations, keeping our mission firmly in mind and continuing to strive can the Party stay young and alive,” he said.
While meeting with the media after being re-elected General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee in October, Xi said the Party must remain committed to a people-centered development philosophy and make steady progress toward improving the people’s sense of fulfillment to realize common prosperity.
“For a party that fights for the eternal well-being of the Chinese nation, the centenary only ushers in the prime of life,” he said.
He also introduced the “Two Centenary Goals”, which refers to the strategic targets of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects by 2020 and building a modern socialist country by the centenary of the People’s Republic of China in October 2049.
At a key meeting attended by members of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee in late December, Xi said formalism and bureaucracy are the “big enemies” of the Party and the people.
He urged Party leaders to keep a close eye on family members to prevent them from leveraging their political power for personal gain, and said senior leaders must play a leading role in opposing undesirable work styles, such as formalism, bureaucracy, hedonism and extravagance.
In December 2012, the central leadership issued the “Eight-point Rules” that require government officials to strictly practice frugality and eradicate undesirable work styles. Practices such as using public funds to buy gifts or pay for banquets and holidays have since been banned.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, about 75 percent of the population was satisfied with the government’s anti-corruption efforts in 2012. The figure had risen to 92.9 percent by 2016.